Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet19 December 1910 – 15 April 1986) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later took to writing. His major works include the novels Querelle of Brest, The Thief's Journal, and Our Lady of the Flowers, and the plays The Balcony, The Blacks, The Maids and The Screens...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 December 1910
CountryFrance
air evil world
Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating. They can breathe it.
gun power shadow
Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun.
beautiful betrayal
Betrayal is beautiful.
men opposites names
When the judge calls the criminal's name out he stands up, and they are immediately linked by a strange biology that makes them both opposite and complementary. The one cannot exist without the other. Which is the sun and which is the shadow? It's well known some criminals have been great men.
facts strange share
Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity.
height taste harmony
To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.
flower fragility delicacy
There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts.
born
It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.
sweet princess numbers
She was happy, and perfectly in line with the tradition of those women they used to call "ruined," "fallen," feckless, bitches in heat, ravished dolls, sweet sluts, instant princesses, hot numbers, great lays, succulent morsels, everybody's darlings . . .
firsts rags mines
First of all, don't mix your hairpins up with mine! You .... Oh! All right, mix your muck with mine. Mix it! Mix your rags with my tatters! Mix it all up. ...
hate men laughing
When I beheld you, suddenly - for perhaps a second - I had the strength to reject everything that wasn't you and to laugh at the illusion. But my shoulders are very frail. I was unable to bear the weight of the world's condemnation. And I began to hate you when everything about you would have kindled my love and when love would have made men's contempt unbearable, and their contempt would have made my love unbearable. The fact is, I hate you.
ornaments monstrosity certain
...beauty is the projection of ugliness and by developing certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments.
giving world shapes
Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.
thieves traitor ruthless
I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.